Women In Europe

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

Women In Europe

What They Are Doing To Promote International Understanding are women in other countries doing about peace? Phyllis Lovell, an American writer, recently gathered some interesting facts and information. In France, she says, women have been at work upon an “address” to the American President. French women believe that America may yet save world peace, and they are sending, by Madame Malaterre-Sellier, a letter to President Roosevelt. The letter conies from some 90,000 French mothers and women teachers and states that “everything is expected” from the great American Republic, since it lies in its power to make it possible for the people of the world to organise an efficacious resistance to war. French women wish to see a complete moral disarmament by means of an equitable distribution of necessary raw materials. They would like to see an embargo put on such materials as oil to aggressor nations. They wish the help of the United States to “grant the chance to exist, and deny the chance to kill.” French women are also at work in another direction. They are influencing social experience in regard to temperance. At a conference of I’Union Fraternelle des Femmes, they discussed ways of combatting the drunkenness which is indulged in during the leisure hours conferred by the shortened working week. No licences, they agreed, should be issued to new public houses. The week of 40 hours should be extended to all places where drink is sold. Cabarets, like the shops in France, should be closed on two days a week. The women believed that in the question of temperance they had approached a problem of the utmost importance to their country. From Switzerland, a letter told of the formation, in Zurich, of a Democratic Union of Women. The union has as its objective “any form of cooperation which may strengthen the principles of democracy.” Its members seek to influence public thinking through education, social service, religion, and economic questions. From a friend in Budapest, came ’the news of how the Archduchess Anna is preparing the 10,000 Girl Guides of Hungary for the first Guide jamboree, which’is to be held in the Buda mountains in 1939—a long time ahead, it seems, but the young women of Hungary intend to make a deep impression upon the thinking of the youth of the world by a display of good fellowship. They are learning languages—B2 languages, to be precise—in order that they may talk freely with their visitors. And they are practising the arts of hospitality, and especially the art of cooking. The experiences gained at the jamboree, they say, are intended to form a bond of real friendship between the young people of all nations. A Polish friend told of an effort to influence social experience in quite another direction. In Poland, the women are striving to reform the law which concerns property. The Napoleonic Code—heavy as it has always been on women—still exists in Poland, and through it married women are debarred from holding property, even if owned before marriage. Their only right is over money which they actually earn themselves. In the experience of the women of Poland this state of affairs tends to friction in the home. And friction in the home leads to friction abroad. Affairs in a country will not run smoothly, they say, until justice is established. However, as women have their representatives in Parliament, and as a commission is already considering the matter, there is every likelihood that reform will come soon.